<p>If (high satisfaction = high levels of personal happiness), its impossible to provide accurate information on which carers make people the happiest. No one knows how comfortable each person is with their position and psychological studies only provide a rough guess at best. </p>
<p>If (high satisfaction = high earning levels), then the following careers should have high satisfaction rates:</p>
<p>Finance
Business Administration
Software Engineering
[Chemical, Electrical and Computer, Mechanical, Biomedical, Industrial, Civil and Environmental] Engineering
[Physics, Biology, Chemistry] research</p>
<p>Students with the majors listed above tend to earn the most. I don’t think that (money=happiness), but monetary gain is closely tied to happiness. Thus, we could assume that people in these majors are the “happiest.” Just remember that “happiness” isn’t an exact science and only you would know what you find enjoyable.</p>
<p>Of course, relatively few students majoring in those subjects get to the desired research positions. This is similar to pre-meds actually eventually getting to and through medical school to become a highly paid physician, or pre-laws actually eventually getting to the top 14 law schools and graduating in the top of their law school classes to lead to the few very well paid law jobs.</p>
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<p>I’m not so sure that absolute amounts of money are really that strongly tied to happiness, beyond having enough to be in a non-poverty state. Perhaps more important is which direction your income and wealth are going – people may be happier if it is going up (even from a low base) than if it is going down (even from a high base).</p>
<p>
[QUOTE=turbo93]
Biology, strictly from the point of view of a parent who knows as much about biology as I do about bagpipes, seems to be unnecessarily hard tho… For the same amount of effort one can get a physics or math degree and with much better prospects of job placement. Are that many kids really chasing a medical degree (in which case biology seems like the easy weeder-out)???
[/QUOTE]
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<p>For whatever reason, biology is the largest STEM major, at a third or more of total STEM majors (all types of engineering combined are another third, and the rest is made up of the other sciences and engineering technology).</p>
<p>The Berkeley graduating class of 2011 had 1175 bachelor’s degree graduates in various biology majors. This was 14.1% of the overall graduating class of 8306.</p>
<p>Engineering (all combined)<em>: 838, 10.1% #
Economics</em>: 509, 6.1%
Political Science: 427, 5.1%
Business Administration<em>: 357, 4.3%
Psychology</em>: 344, 4.1%
English: 332, 4.0%
Math + Applied Math + Statistics: 290, 3.5%
Political Economy: 259, 3.1%
Sociology: 246, 3.0%
Media Studies<em>: 230, 2.8%
History: 224, 2.7%
Environmental Economics</em>: 190, 2.3%
Architecture: 174, 2.1%
Computer Science+: 117, 1.4%
Physics: 90, 1.1%</p>
<ul>
<li>= limited enrollment major, students have to apply to declare or change into; the biology majors are not limited enrollment</li>
<li>= in College of Letters and Science
= of which 260, 3.1% in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science</li>
<p>Right, but the question remains, why are they busting their tail for 4 years if very few of them will end up in med school, at Genentech with a post doc, or as profs. Are 90% of the grads aiming for med school?</p>
<p>Bio is also an expensive major to run, as costly as engineering I guess. What are colleges getting out of it?</p>
<p>I get a kick out of the fact that construction equipment operators are satisfied with their jobs, while their supervisors are killing themselves at a significantly higher than average rate. Lesson learned: don’t go into management.</p>
<p>Not sure what’s up with the precision woodworkers, but most of the listed professions involve high stakes decision making where the consequences of error are extremely costly. I expect that having one of these jobs increases the risk of making a mistake from which one believes one cannot recover.</p>
<p>Well, can’t be by junior year, since most of them will have grades too low to have a realistic chance at medical school. But perhaps it may be due to the fact the biology is the least math-heavy of the sciences, so students who like science but are not good at math end up in biology by default.</p>
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</p>
<p>Could be as costly in terms of labs, but cheaper in terms of faculty and staff, because of the poor other employment prospects for biology PhDs compared to engineering PhDs.</p>
<p>"But I said it was in demand, just that I think the new fields are more in demand because they’ve got very few students. Also, I think you missed the part where I said I’m in Mexico, since you mentioned minors, which we don’t even have here. Really, the situation’s quite different. </p>
<p>But reality, too, shows me that there are many Computer Science majors HERE that are unemployed or working as teachers because they’ve got no idea what they’re doing. I think you missed the part of my post saying the competent students are in demand. I know many of those kind, and they’re all very satisfied with their jobs."</p>
<p>Right, for some reason I thought I’d read New Mexico, not Mexico. My point about getting a good job with just a minor in CS would have been more aptly described if I had said, if you have internship experience, many CS classes, and ability, it may not be important to actually have that CS major. At least in the United States, I doubt that many here can tell you about the Mexican job market. To get the best jobs, one must be willing to relocate.</p>
<p>As far as incompetent CS majors, what would that have to do with you? Certainly, you would have to be competent to work in that field. You don’t plan on being incompetent, so really the fact that others don’t have the ability to work in the CS field is irrelevant to you. Unless of course, you think it is because they were poorly educated in CS, and that you are getting the same education. Good luck.</p>
<p>You know as I read what some people say and I actually recently read an article about “do what you are passionate about” that is really not true nowadays and probably has not been true for the past 50 years. Society is heading in the direction of Medicine and Technology and if you do not adapt to this then you will just fall behind (Survival of the Fittest). While I love history and if this were not reality speakings I would become a history major, paint pictures all day and be famous if it were my choice. However, this is reality and while you can have hobbies, you can still keep those interests but have a job that pays money. Even when the economy turns around people still will not be hiring those in the liberal arts. </p>
<p>I feel as though those anomolies that get hired as an English major or History major are truly lucky and have connections from their parents or graduated from Harvard do not count in the equation. We then we could say well so and so hit the lottery when we know how difficult that is. </p>
<p>Those who say do what your passionate about you will enjoy your job more may be right, but lets find the reality in what your passionate about because you can find a career you somewhat like, I mean who really does enjoy work anyways all the time? You can then keep your interests and read history books on the side. </p>
<p>I guarantee there will not be a high satisfaction rate for those liberal arts majors that come out making 20,000-30,000$ a year and have to pay off their debt within 6 months. Hence, this age old expression is now a fallacy and should be taken with a grain of salt. I think people should pursue their dreams but understand that they must be realistic. We deff need creative people in this world and the next rags to riches story to come, but not every single person can achieve this. sometimes it just has to fall into your lap no matter how hard you try.</p>
<p>I actually have a person story, I had a teacher in high school who earned his PhD from a top univeristy in history and he was unable to find a job thirty years ago and ended up in high school teaching. While at old age he is happy with his life now, his dreams were to be a professor. It just goes to show you that life does not always turn out how you planned it to be and that gone were the days when you really worked for enjoyment. Society changes constantly and we must change with it.</p>
<p>It may be that liberal arts majors are more common at more selective schools because:</p>
<p>a. Graduating from a more selective (prestigious) school may be enough of an attraction to some employers by itself, regardless of major (finance and consulting are the usual examples, though this effect is less in other fields).</p>
<p>b. Students at more selective schools are more likely to be from wealthy and better connected families who can be of more assistance in finding internships and post-graduation jobs.</p>
<p>At less selective schools, pre-professional majors are more common.</p>
<p>ucbalumnus, I deff agree with that reasoning as to why they have such high rates. That is how they earn jobs, but for the average person it will get us no where.</p>
<p>My understanding is that wealth only increases happiness up to a certain threshold – so a comfortably middle-class person might be happier than the average lower middle-class person, who in turn is happier than someone living closer to the poverty line. But the average millionaire isn’t necessarily happier than the average upper middle-class person. Similarly, when there is sustained economic improvement in a region the residents are happier, but it’s been found that beyond a certain threshold there is little correlation between GDP and citizens’ happiness/well-being. Jigme Singye Wangchuck, former king of Bhutan, actually coined the term Gross National Happiness as an alternative to GDP. </p>
<p>The bottom line, from my perspective (albeit as a student going into public policy and the arts) is that the career itself isn’t necessarily linked to satisfaction, but success/personal fulfillment within that career is.</p>
<p>I think this topic makes more sense if you start by asking yourself what do you like to do and what are the things you are good at? If you have no aptitude for playing a musical instrument or performing on stage, then it really doesn’t matter how ‘satisfied’ people in that line of work are. As with most studies of this type, you have to look past the results and see factors they are measuring to come up with their conclusions, since measuring ‘satisfaction’ can involve a lot of arbitrary criteria.</p>
<p>From what we have noticed with our older one and now younger one starting to look at internships – quantitative skills and computing skills and the ability to speak and write extremely well will be a very good combination for getting jobs with opportunity and doing well in them. This could translate into a sociology degree with lots of math, stats and CS coursework. It could be an English degree with secondaries in stats and/or computer science.</p>
<p>I do think the more selective colleges provide more latitude for kids to land a good job without resorting to a very regimented engineering course of study.</p>
<p>And yeah – that’s one of the reasons it’s helpful to attend them.</p>
<p>I heard that Pharmacy has a high satisfaction rate. That’s actually what I’m planning on doing. It has great pay and a lot of job opportunities.</p>
<p>People do study this, and it’s worth considering. According to the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, job satisfaction is highest in the following occupations:</p>
<p>This kind if research is relatively meaningless. Any statistician will tell you that you should not compare unlike populations, and the types of people who go into these professions are certainly unlike those that become Engineers, Accountants, Business General Managers, and Wall Street traders, sales reps, or any of countless other professions.</p>
<p>A person with an air traffic controller personality will probably not make a good special ed teacher the air traffic controller wants constant action. I was an author for the first three years after I graduated from college, wrote for prestigious magazines, and I hated it. Most of the time, I worked in front of a typewriter (now it would be a word processor ). I quit, and essentially went into business. Im now a business consultant.</p>
<p>Personally, being a firefighter strikes me as boring waiting long hours for an alarm to go off. Ive watched construction machinery operators, and although many may love their jobs, I would want to quit after a day or two. This comes down to personality and countless other factors.</p>
<p>Unless you randomly assign people into these professions at the start and do a long-term, longitudinal study, research such as this doesnt separate the persons personality, drive, intelligence and general level of happiness they inherently have from their choice of profession. And obviously, we cant force people into certain professions randomly just to conduct a 40-year study.</p>